The country people whispered strange things of "Miss Sybil" and her whims and fancies. The family had been known as "the reckless Burnets" ever since the Georgian days, when the sixth Viscount had, in one night at Crockford's, gambled away the whole of his vast Yorkshire estate, and his son on the following night lost forty-five thousand guineas at the same table. Dare-devilry ran in the Scarcliff blood. From the Wars of the Roses down to the present day the men had always been fearless soldiers—for some of their armor, and that of their retainers, still stood in long, grim rows in the dark-paneled gallery where we were—and the women had always been notable for their beauty, as proved by the famous portraits by Gainsborough, Lawrence, Lely, Reynolds, Hoppner, and others, that hung in the splendid gallery beyond.